Entangled
by baby-kitsune9
Summary: he was a nymph, the greatest of living legends stuck in a modern world ruled by money, greed and humans. he foundher wunded in a dark alley, on the brink of death and took her home with him to nurse her back to health. could this female be his one true love? updated with a chapter 6!
1. Chapter 1

Satisfaction hummed inside of him as he slipped out of the ritzy hotel suite where he had had his latest conquest.

She had been a pretty little thing, like most creatures of the fairer sex usually are. But she was nothing that could hold his attentions for long. He was a nymph. An utterly sexual. An utterly captivating in appearance-loved debauchery in _all _it's kinky forms-nymph. Women had only to look at him to want him. Such was a nymph's appeal. Physical beauty that rivaled the gods themselves, and predatory instincts that were triggered by certain things.

Like the delicious scent of a new prey. To the need to hunt and defend their territory and any females in it. Ranging in need and obsession, from gentle to to a killers violence. He stopped walking and looked around the champagne colored walls with gold trim, suddenly feeling a mite paranoid about walking down the hotel halls without his face mask on. Any human that gazed upon him would instantly want him.

And from time to time his lovers became dangerously violent.

And while his mask lessened the impact of his sexuality, in some ways it also made his sexuality worse. He reached down and pulled the black fabric hanging around his neck, up until it covered everything from his chin to the top of his nose then reached up and ran his fingers through his long silver colored hair. Pushing it back from his shoulder blades and wishing that his hair tie hadn't been lost by the female that he had just left.

He walked to the elevator and punched the down button and stood there waiting for it to come up so that he could go down and walk the five miles back to his car, which had been left at a bar that one of his friends owned, so that he could drive home and get some sleep before he had to go to work. There was a soft ping and the elevator doors opened, allowing him to step inside and relax a little bit since there was no one else around.

He leaned his shoulder against the side and waited patiently for the metal and wood box to stop again, once it did he stepped out of it and right into the large champagne and gold room where the front desk was located and waved to the guy behind the counter as he walked towards the door.

"Have a good night sir!" The guy called out. The man smiled behind his mask and called back in his husky dark velvety voice.

"You too." He stepped out of the hotel and looked up at the dark clouds in the sky, subtly inhaling the scent of a rain storm on the wind. It would be here in an hour or so. Wonderful. Now all he had to do was get from point A to point B (without getting distracted) an he should be in bed...two hours before he went into work.

Lovely.

Another sleepless night for him. He sighed, he should just go back upstairs and go back to bed with his latest lover and hope for an hour or so of sleep before she woke him up for another round of loving. He stood there in the dark silently debating with himself before deciding that he didn't want to deal with the female upstairs anymore and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and started walking.

He walked relatively easily considering that the side walks were still slightly full, and was entranced by he sights and smells, there was just something about the city at night that enchanted him. Maybe it was because he was a creature of myth, or maybe he was still in awe over how far the humans had come in the few short centuries since ancient times.

Building made of glass, steel and stone, buildings so tall that they could touch the sky above. Vehicles that were faster than horses and chariots, made of metal, glass and rubber. Vehicles that flew though the sky.

_Honestly it was amazing_.

Humans were amazing.

He walked past the park, just two in a half miles from where his car was.

He dug around in his right pocket for the cigarettes that he carried on him just in case he felt the need to blend in and smoke something and pulled them out of his pocket along with the small silver lighter with a wolf howling at the moon etched into the sides and pulled one of the slender white sticks out and tugged his mask down, figuring that it should be safe to do so since there was practically no one out at this ungodly hour and put the stick in his mouth and lit it, inhaling deeply so that he could feel the full force of the horrible poisonous smoke filling his lungs.

He held his breath and then let it out after a second or so and smiled. God he loved being so resilient. He could smoke, and drink as much as he wanted and his body would never suffer for his choices. Even if he ate nothing but junk food, his blood pressure, his heart, and other organs would never show any signs of abuse. He would remain in perfect health for another one-two thousand years or so before old age set in.

He took another drag as he stuffed the packet and lighter back into his pocket and exhaled as he started walking again.

He reached the neighborhood where his car was located and stopped cold when he smelled the scent of fresh blood. Curious by nature he tossed the cigarette aside and sniffed the air, trying to determine which direction that the scent of blood was coming from and started walking again, this time following his keen sense of smell to the sorce and froze. His predatory instincts kicking in as he gazed down at the frightened, shaking figure of a young woman, curled up on the pavement, her back against a red brick building.

There were bruises on her neck, her wrists, one on the side of her cheek, and there was blood running down her face from under her hair line, along her jaw, dripping down onto her soft purple shirt which was slightly torn around the neck. She looked up at him after a second or so, seeming to finally realise that someone was standing there as he dug out his cell phone and did some quick calculations in his head.

The nearest hospital was over twelve miles away, and she was bleeding far too much from her wounds to last that long. His car was just around the corner, and his home was ten minutes from here. He could have a doctor at his house in under that time. He pushed the automatic dial button followed by two and put the phone to his ear as he dropped down beside her.

"H-Help... Please..." She said weakly as he reached out and carfully pulled her up into an sitting positon and started to look over her wounds. Her voice was beautiful, even for her current state. So smokey, and sensous, it kindled a small fire in his blood fueling his need to _do_ something to help her before her life slipped away. He checked the small wound on her head, determining that she probably had a fractured skull or something before asking.

"Where else are you hurt?" She blinked, and reached out a delicate bloody hand and grasped his shirt, her body shaking uncontrollably. He frowned, was she going into shock? He'd bet she was. And that wasn't good. She sobbed and he quickly shrugged off his jacket and started to wrap it around her when he saw that she was holding her abdomen and set his jacket asde for a second ad gently pulled her hand away from her abdomen and growled low in his throat.

Dear god, someone had cut her open! And the blood, fuck, no wonder she was in shock. He'd be in shock too if his hand was the only thing holding some of his intestines inside of him. He swore and grabbed his jacket and pressed it against her wound in place of her hand and applied as much pressure as he dared, he needed to stop the bleeding before the female died. His late father's friend answered the phone and he gave a quick order.

"Get to my place now and bring you're things." He snapped the phone closed and scooped up the wounded female and carefully as he could without causing her more damage headed back towards his car. If he could get there, he could maybe use the cigarette lighter in his car to cauterise the corners of the wound closed. It wouldn't fix his little strays bleeding problem but it would make the wound smaller and give him the time needed to get her to his place and get her the medical attention that she needed.


	2. Chapter 2

_The ride to his home too less time than he had thought it would, mainly because he had been going eighty the entire way. He kept one hand on the partially cauterised wound, to stop the bleeding and looked over and the woman, noting small things like her breathing patters and how quickly her blood stained his hand and his car seat. It wasn't so bad now that most of the wound had been sealed closed._

_But the woman herself, was unconscious._

_She had been the moment he had touched his car's cigarette lighter to her skin. The pain from her wound, coupled with the blood loss and pain from being burned had almost been enough to stop her heart completely. He glanced over at her again, noting that her skin was turning an unhealthy almost chalk white color and jerked his steering wheel to the left, not really caring that he was about to drive through the iron gate that blocked his drive way._

_He pressed his hand more firmly to the wound and gritted his teeth and pushed the gas peddle down as far as it would go and braced himself as his sleek black Benz slammed through the great iron gate, there was a loud crash and a slightly jerking motion, forward and back, he grunted and growled in annoyance as his gate stuck to the wind shield of his car._

_The cracked and breaking glass obscuring his vision as he jerked the wheel to the left again and stomped on the break, causing the car to spin almost violently around. Once, twice, the slight side jerking motion indicated that the car had come to a full stop. He looked at the woman again and made a small sound in the back of his throat. Damn. He went through more cars than condoms. His insurance was going to go through the roof._

_"You better live." He muttered as he snapped the seat belt from around the woman and none too gently dragged her across from her seat into his lap and had to kick his damaged car door practically off of it's hinges as a couple of people, a tall muscular looking man with long snowy white hair and a tall busty blond woman, both looking to be in their twenties and thirties stood on his front porch looking at him as if he were a mad man._

_And maybe he was, god only knew why he was going to all this trouble for a stray._

_God knew that he hated strays, and yet when he had seen the frightened look on the woman's face, something foreign had just seemed to click in his mind. But he wasn't concerned with what it was just yet, he just wanted the woman taken care of. "A little help." He growled as he unfolded his tall muscular body from his hand made compact. The man jumped over the railing of his porch and ran over to him and took the woman from him and the male felt the need to snarl at him like a wild animal._

_For some reason that he didn't understand, he didn't want the man touching her. He didn't want anyone but him touching her._

_"What happened?" The woman asked as she came running up. Worry etched into her delicate features._

_"I think she was mugged-" The silver haired male said as he managed to get out of his car, but only after ripping out the steering wheel to make a little room for his shoulders to fit throught the door. "Did you bring you're tools?"_

_"Yes. I even brought seven bags of blood just in case." The woman said. The silver haired male nodded his head and started pushing the other man up the walk way to his porch, the woman following behind them._

_(***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)_

_Once the three were inside and the lights were switched on, the white haired male lay the woman on the nymph's dining room table and moved aside so that the woman could examine the wounded stray that the nymph had brought home. "This wound is awful, Kakashi!" The woman said as she pulled the dark blue jacket from the woman's abdomen._

_Kakashi blinked at the woman and nodded his head. "Yeah. No kidding."_

_"What's with these burns?"_

_Kakashi raised his hand into the air a little bit and looked a little ashamed. "I tried to seal most of the wound closed to slow the bleeding."_

_The woman looked at him, her golden brown eyes narrowed a little bit as she thinned her lips a little bit before saying. "Oh. Well done there-" She looked at the white haired man standing next to him and before he could so much a look at the man, the guy's palm connected with the back of his head and nearly knocked him over. _

_"You bought her time, and added to her suffering. Really, that was just brilliant." The blond snapped at him and looked at the white haired man again, earning him another rough smack in the back of the head. Again, nearly knocking him over._

_"Better a scar and some suffering than death." Kakashi snapped in irritation as he rubbed the back of his head and sort of shuffled his feet until he was well out of reaching distance._

_The woman looked at him then back down at the girl. "Well, that is true I suppose." She said as she bent back over the girl and started to clean the wound with the rubbing alcohol and cotton balls while the needle and thread that she would use to sew the girl up soaked in some disinfectant. After cleaning the wound, she then checked for internal bleeding before making a humming sound._

_The two men watched her carefully, both of them tense and ready to move to help her if the girl woke up and started struggling. "The blade missed her organs. But she's lost a lot of blood-" Maybe more than she could afford to lose. She was so small and delicate that the woman had trouble seeing this girl as little more than a child. "Jiraiya, could you get an I.V. going? We need to start a blood transfusion or we'll lose her." The woman said without looking up. _

_The white haired man moved forward, picking up a medium sized cooler and pulled out three packets of bright crimson and grabbed a needle from his wife's tools and grasped the wounded girl's right arm and quickly set up the I.V._

_"Kakashi come over here and hold her hand." The woman said as she picked the needle and tread up out of the anticeptic and pushed the needle through the small torn patch of skin, the girl jumped in her unconsious state, and the woman frowned. She shouldn't be able to feel any pain in her current state, and yet she had jumped like she had felt the needle being pushed through her skin._

_Kakashi walked over to the table and grasped the unknown females hand in his and gave it a soft squeeze, thinking that if she were awake she'd probably appreciate the gesture. He was only slightly startled when her hand squeezed back a little bit before going totally limp._


	3. Chapter 3

Wow, it's been forever since I updated this story. For those of you who don't know the story, it's previously untitled- Now titled Entanglments. I thought it was fitting for a Kakashi/fem Naru story.

Enjoy.

(***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Kakashi was standing out in the hall with Jiriaya while Tsunade finished working on the girl laying unconscious and desperately clinging to life, on his dining room table. And after about thirty minutes was so anxious that he started pacing and jumping at the slightest creak of the wooken floor under his feet.

_Goddammit it shouldn't take_ _this long to patch a wound and replace blood!_ He thought darkly before stopping his pacing and peeking into the dining room to see Tsunade rigging another bag of blood and attaching it to the IV in the young woman's arm.

He felt a large hand on his shoulder and nearly came out of his skin before twisting his head around to look at Jiriaya. The man was standing as quiet and still as a statue as he peeked around the corner of the open door way to see what Tsunade was doing. Finally twenty minutes later the second blood bag was empty and Tsunade hooked another up then took the girl's pulse just to make sure she was stablizing.

Then called the men into the room and intructed them that they would need to move the woman while she was still stable.

Jiriaya took hold of the woman's upper body and Kakashi took hold of her lower body and as carefully as they could, picked her up off of the table while Tsunade ran ahead to find a comfortable room for the woman where she could fix things so that she could take the third bag of blood.

She looked in on three rooms before finding the perfect one.

A nice quant aqua and lavender colored room with a large bed with silk sheets and pillows out to wa-zoo. There was a walk in closet, white oak furniture, a lounge chair across the room- under the window, aqua colored curtains, a small vanity...

But most of all there was a hook just above the bed that she could hang the blood bag from. _This room is perfect-_ She thought as she stepped into the room and quickly turned down the bedding before poking her head out of the room and calling her boys in.

Jiriaya and Kakashi both walked in white faced, and quickly deposited the woman on the bed while Tsunade fixed the blood bag then stepped back and smacked Kakashi's hands away when he started to pull the girl's shoes off. "Ow! Tsunade, what the hell?"

"You're not undressing her Hatake. She's wounded and you'd only hurt her. Now go get me a bowl of warm water, a clean rag, and an clean shirt. _I'll_ be undressing and cleaning her up before she's tucked in." Kakashi looked mutinous for a moment but did as she said once Jiriaya walked over to stand behind him with his arms crossed and an intimidating look on his face.

The second the nymph was gone Jiriaya chuckled softly in amusement as Tsunade laughed quietly before saying. "I think he's assumed reponsibility for this young lady." Her mate glanced down at the girl and smiled.

"Can't really blame him. She is a beauty." Jiriaya said as he looked at the woman's features.

She was hauntingly lovely with her mid shoulder length silvery blond hair, framing an angelic heart shaped face. Soft, fair skin, pale pink lips. A petite build with nice gentle curves; not too big but then again not too small that she could be mistaken for a prepubescent boy either. Long slender legs that if she was standing, would place her at about five foot six.

Maybe five foot seven.

Why she was just tall enough to reach Kakashi's shoulders since the nymph was about six foot three. "True-" Tsunade agreed with him, jolting him out of his thoughts as Kakashi came back into the room with the things that Tsunase had asked for and set the bowl and rag down on the white oak table next to the bed, pushing the colorful opalecent white and aqua butterfly Tiffany lamp sitting in the way, to the back a little bit.

Then handed Tsunade the shirt he'd dug out of his closet then stepped back out of the way and crossed his arms over his chest. Tsunade looked at the fine silk of the shirt for a moment then looked back at him. "Uh... don't you have anything less...silky?"

"No."

"Seriously? No cotton? No wool?"

"They make my skin itch." Kakashi deadpanned as Jiriaya snorted and muttered something inaudible under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, _Bloody liar. _Kakashi let his slur slip and pretended not to have heard. So he didn't particularly like cotton or wool. Big frigging deal.

It really did make his skin itch. Though not in a normal way. To Kakashi, those damndable fabrics were restricting, and bothersome. The way they rubbed against his skin made him _need. _And lord knew that there was nothing more irritating than wearing something that put you in the mood for sex when you couldn't relieve yourself fast enough to make the need go away completely.

That was why he liked silk. It was much softer and less constricting. It didn't make him hot or aching... Wait, what had Tsunade just said to him? He wondered when the woman wheeled around and grabbed his Tiffany lamp and shouted, "I said, get the fuck out!" Kakashi blanched and ran for the door before Tsunade turned on her mate and bared her teeth and growled at him.

Jiriaya put his hands up in a placating gesture and slowly backed away and slipped through the door and pulled it closed as the woman set the lamp back down and said in a huffy tone, _"Men."_


	4. Chapter 4

Tsunade stripped the young woman as carefully as she could so that she wouldn't disturb her rest. the shirt was easy to remove considering that the once lovely purple material had been torn all the way to the woman's navel.

Once it was removed Tsunade silently debated on whether or not to leave the woman's bra on. Some women were comfortable with such things on while they slept and others weren't. After about a minute or so of debate Tsunade figured that maybe the bra should stay on.

After all if Kakashi had assumed responsibility for this woman then she would need all of the clothes on that she could get. _I should have asked Kakashi to bring her some sweat pants with a draw string that she could triple knot. _

God knew that the girl would need some pants especially since Kakashi was going to do his damndest to charm them right off of her while she was healing. _Maybe I can convince Jiriaya to 'temporarily' move in and make sure that Kakashi doesn't try to mount the girl the second I'm out the door. _Tsunade thought almost darkly as she pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before shaking her head.

No. No, that wouldn't work since Kakashi would know why the older nymph was in his home and he'd run around working himself into a tizzy and throwing fits like a jealous child just to try and get the elder out of his home. And that wouldn't be good since the woman would be caught in the middle of a nymph's phychlogical battle for turf.

Kakashi might react violently at one point or another and then the woman would either run screaming into the night or cause her to get wounded while trying to seperate the males. Tsunade carefully lifted the woman's upper body and slipped the silk shirt over her head then put her arms through the sleeves while trying to think of something that would cause Kakashi's normally unstoppable sex drive to shrivel at the drop of a hat.

The only thing that she could think of that might work was what Jiriaya had once told her. It wasn't a super special move or anything. It was just a word. A simple, yet insulting word to ones that prided themselves on seduction and sex.

Rape- for some reason nymphs like Kakashi were conditioned to go totally flacid upon hearing the word. And would then back away from any female that had spoken said word and sit somewhere far away from said female (or any female) in the general vicinity and ignore them.

For some odd reason despite being very sexual beings, nymphs thought of rape in a similar fashion to women. To them, intimacy was meant to be _pleasant_ for both people. Whether they were young, old, male, female, human or otherwise.

And they had very strong feelings that anyone that was so _cruel_ as to force such pain on another, weaker person should be taken out, beaten, have their junk removed by a spoon. Then they should tied down to some metal spikes sticking up out of the ground in a park and fed to wild dogs.

Still...Tsunade was reluctant to mention the word since she could recall the first time she and Jiriaya had met. He'd gotten a little out of hand and scared her causing her to scream the word in an effort to get help.

She could recall the look of pain and disbelief that had flitted across his face a mere heartbeat before he'd let go of her and turned and walked away.

She even recalled how deeply hearing that word affected him once he'd started to court her seriously. He'd maintained his distance from her physically. Not doing more than kiss her knuckles or her cheek before walking away.

He'd let her have control of every aspect of their courtship and had only touched her when she finally asked him too.

Even now after almost nine years of marriage he still kept _some_ distance between them. Not wanting to frighten her again by forcing himself to control his desires to an almost painful extent.

She laid the woman back down and carefully rolled the sleeves up on the shirt and then started in on her dirty purple pants. Gently tugging the slacks down the woman's hips, then pulled them the rest of the way off and was folding them when something fell out of one of the pockets. Tsunade looked down and blinked at the soft leather wallet and got a funny look on her face.

If this poor woman had been mugged, then why did she still have a wallet?

Laying the pants aside she bent down and picked up the wallet and flipped it open and wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or cry as she looked at the contents and became aware of two things. 1) The girl's ID was in it.

And 2) This wasn't the woman's wallet.

It was the wallet of one Itachi Uchiha, age twenty seven. _Oh dear god._ Tsunade thought as she gave in to her first impulse and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a hysterical laugh. This woman/child that Kakashi had picked up...seemed to have picked the pocket of her mugger. Or at least Tsunade would like to think this anyways.

It was just so outrageous that she couldn't help but find herself hoping that that was what had happened so that the woman's attacker could be caught and gotton off of the street for good.


	5. Chapter 5

"Itachi Uchiha..." Kakashi said in a thoughtful tone as he looked at the driver's license in the wallet that Tsunade had placed in his hands. He vaguely recalled hearing osmething about a group of humans with the Uchiha name being murdered for being part of a crime syndicate.

Apparently they had gotten a little too greedy and started stealing money and offing their boss's men and trying to set the guy up. However someone somewhere had made a mistake and the whole Uchiha bloodline had been wiped out aside from two young children. Kakashi wondered if the young man in the driver's license photo was maybe one of those kids, all grown up.

"You think that she stole this from the guy that attacked her?" Kakashi asked with a frown as he flipped the wallet closed. Tsunade nodded her head then handed him something else that she had found in the woman's pants pocket. It was another driver's license, this one belonging to the young woman laying in the bedroom behind the three huddled in the hallway.

According to the license the woman's name was Nara Naru Uzumaki- She was twenty two, one hundred and ten pounds, stood at five foot six in a half inches, had teal colored eyes and was blood type AB. She lived on South Street, just five miles from where Kakashi's home was located in apatment B-13.

"How did she manage to keep her license if she was mugged?" Jiriaya asked his mate curiously. Tsunade shrugged.

"I couldn't find another wallet so I can only assume that she heard the guy comming and quickly hid her license. After all, her mugger was after her _valubles_. Not her name, or address. As long as she handed over her wallet or purse he'd have no reason to look for her license. My guess is that she managed to seperate it from her other things so that if she were killed the authorities would be able to ID her and find her family."

Kakashi nodded his head, accepting what she had just explained without question. Although...

"If she handed her stuff over automatically then what reason did he have to cut her open?" Kakashi wondered aloud as Tsunade giggled and held out a small wad of hundred dollar bills to him. He stared at it and opened his mouth to ask what the money was for when it hit him. It was the woman's money. She had handed over a small portion of it and hidden the rest.

The guy had lashed out in anger and frustration then had left her to die thinking that he'd chosen a bad mark. _Oh dear god..._ He thought as he lifted one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose to stave off the headache he felt coming on as Jiriaya started laughing. "Oh that's just too funny!"

"No it isn't-" Kakashi snapped at the elder nymph. Just a little bit_ irked_ that the man was laughing when the woman in the bedroom could still possibly die of infection. Fever. Organ rot... There were a thousand things that could go wrong now. Really, what was so damn funny about some poor girl being gutted and almost dying just because she had outsmarted her mugger? He didn't get it.

And he certainly wouldn't be rude enough to laugh even if he did get it. "Stop laughing you giant jackass. The girl may have outsmarted her mugger but she's still in danger." Kakashi hissed at the older man through clenched teeth. "Has it occurred to you that Itachi might have been stalking her? Following her to work and back home again? He could have been doing it for weeks before deciding to strike!"

Tsunade stomped on her husbands foot to stop him from laughing as she reached out and put a hand on Kakashi's shoulder as his eyes started to glow a feral scarlet. A sure sign of his temper. "Calm down Kakashi. Of course we've thought of that." Jiriaya quickly pulled himself together and looked down at her with a puzzled look that practically screamed,_ I_ _didn't think of that! _

"I was going to have Jiriaya go check her apartment out, maybe bring her a few personal effects and some clothes for her to wear once she's able to get out of bed. You have me on speed dial, if anything happens- Like if she develops a high fever, starts getting sick, the wound gets infected and so on."

"What will you do if you see that man there?" Kakashi asked Jiriaya in a growling tone. The elder blinked his dark eyes and started to open his mouth to tell her that he had no clue when Tsunade said in a very firm tone.

"He'll snap his spine in half and toss him in a ditch to die."

Kakashi nodded his head, finding that acceptable before Tsunade said. "All you have to do is keep the woman calm and nurse her back to health." Kakashi's face drained of all color under his mask and he stared at the woman in slack jawed disbelief and started shaking his head no.

No, no, no, no! He couldn't nurse a human woman back to health! It just wasn't possible! Tsunade was out of her everflipping mind if she thought he could handle- They all heard a sound coming from the bedroom and Kakashi looked back at the room's door over his shoulder, his mismatched eyes narrowing a little bit before he turned and went to go see what that sound was.

Behind him Tsunade and Jiriaya exchanged a knowing look, complete with smirks. Oh, this was going to be fun to watch.


	6. Chapter 6

Kakashi gripped the doorknob warily in his hand and slowly opened the door to the bedroom and saw that Nara was slowly waking. Looking back at Tsunade and Jiriaya anxiously. Hoping that they could give him some advice on handling a houseguest that wasn't one of his usual conquests, only to find that they were gone.

_Son of a bitch! _He thought in outrage and panic as he heard the front door slam shut.

_Damn those two move fast. _He should have broken one of Jiriaya's legs to slow them from escaping and leaving him alone in his house with a defensless human female that was wounded and _totally off limits to him_.

Especially since he had no idea how to deal with his current situation.

He didn't know the first thing about nursing someone to back to health. Let alone a fragile slip of a human female.

He opened the door a little wider when he saw Nara's eyes flutter open and figured that the first logical step to helping her would be to assure her that she was in a safe place and she would be protected from further harm.

Slipping into the bedroom he quietly moved over to the bed and vaguely noted that Tsunade had left some pain meds and some other stuff along with a small note to help him figure out how much was supposed to be used and when, on the bedside table.

And couldn't help but thank god for small favors since there could be seditives among the meds that he could use to put her to sleep if she became too much for him to handle.

He stood there for a moment, shifting form foot to foot nervously as he shoved his hands into his hands pockets and tried to hunch over a bit so that he would seem less intimidating than he really was.

After all if she went hysterical on him, she could reopen her wounds and bleed to death.

And it would be all his fault.

Which he was sure was something that he didn't want on his conscience as his mis matched eyes locked with unusual glazed teal colored eyes and he swallowed..._hard_ as his knees suddenly felt weak.

_Oh god, what the hell is wrong with me?_ He wondered as she looked around the room, somehow without moving her head any. Then looked back at him and asked in a raspy tone that sounded damaged or weak from being unused, "Where am I?"

The sound reminded him of Irish Whiskey. Both rough and smooth all at once. It was..._lovely_. Much like the woman herself. Or at least he thought so as he took his time replying to her query.

"Your safe." He finally managed to say as he saw her fingers clutch the bedsheets so hard that her knuckles turned white.

"This isn't a hospital-" She said and he quickly found himself shaking his head, unable to speak. Her voice was starting to do funny things to his insides and he wasn't totally sure but he thought his legs were about to give out on him completely.

"If this isn't a hospital, then where am I?" She asked after a moment or so of silence. Her mind seemed to be working at a much faster and more alert pace now.

Alarming him somewhat since she was probably about to start freaking out on him.

"Your at my place. I have a friend who's a doctor...she patched you up." He said softly as he thought darkly,_Then ran away like a dirty dog with it's tail between it's legs, damn her. _"She also said that you couldn't be moved which is why your not at a hospital right now. So I'm going to be taking care of you until your better." He continued awkwardly, hoping to cut off any anxiety she may be feeling and possibly put it to rest.

"Do you have any medical training?" She asked in a curious tone as she frowned at him. He thinned his lips and shook his head no and then pulled a hand out of his pants pocket and picked up the note that Tsunade had left for him and held it up and jokingly said.

"No, but I have a _how-to-care-for-the-wounded-for-dummies_ mini book right here. That and I have my friend on speed dial so no worries. Between her, her husband and myself I'm sure that you'll survive whatever happens next." He said with what he hoped was an encuraging smile.

It wasn't.

"That doesn't really comfort me any." He sighed, somehow feeling as if she'd just hurt him and muttered.

"I know. I'm sorry." And he was. He was sorry about everything. About the fact that she had been mugged. About the fact that she had been hurt so badly. He was even sorry that he didn't know more about nursing wounds.

Hell, he was almost sorry that he had even been born!

That was how fragile she looked to him, laying among the pillows and blankets, all pale and weak from blood loss. "Are you in any pain?" He finally asked, wanting to steer the conversation away from anything that could cause her even more distress.

She moved her head slightly, indicating that she wasn't in pain then muttered in an barely audible tone, "Tired."

He removed his other hand from his pants pocket and used it to brush her hair back from her face, the action going unnoticed by him until he realised that he was actually touching her. He drew his hand back and looked at his fingertips, feeling as if he'd just been scalded and then looked back at Nara as his heart slammed against his ribs in an unusual manner.

Her eyes were already closed and she was oblivious to the world. Already asleep again.

He fisted his hand and took several shakey breaths then dropped his arm and retreated from the room, suddenly feeling that it was in his best interest to put as much distance as possible between himself and the woman.


End file.
